Academics

Courses: Introduction to Western Civilization (HISTH111A02)

This course--designed primarily for freshmen and sophomores--has several objectives this semester: first, as always, to introduce students to the craft and practice of history, to the ways in which historians imagine and [re]present the past; second, to survey the development of the modern European world over the past half-millennium; next, to explore the "languages" [of religion, politics, and science--for example] in which the West has come both to understand and to celebrate its modernity; and, finally, by reconsidering the factors that explain the "rise of the West," to better appreciate how the past influences the present.